NewsBot

Many of us play Rockstar’s epic sandbox-style games not for the characters, quests, or well told stories, but for the sheer freedom each game allows. Want to skydive into a military base, snatch a tank and destroy every car in Hollywood? You can. And oftentimes raking up wanted stars and outrunning the authorities is more thrilling than any mission the game could provide. In essence, Rockstar games allow you to become the raging bull in the china shop. While the amount of destruction was more limited than it’s cousin Grand Theft Auto (no grenade launchers in the Wild West? WTF), Red Dead Redemption included its own version of Rockstar’s crime system. Players could still go on a shooting spree, in which case either local guards, bounty hunters or special forces would hunt the player down. Fraud, arson, theft—even horse theft was considered a crime! The West may have been Wild, but you couldn’t get away with everything. So how will Rockstar’s big Western sequel handle crime? Let’s take a look at what kind of trouble we hope we can get ourselves into. 1. More Crimes, More Problems The usual assortment of crimes will likely return to Red Dead Redemption 2: cracking safes, kidnappings and holdups, stealing, destruction of property, cheating at poker, etc. But what other crimes might you be able to commit? Given the popularity of Grand Theft Auto V’s heists and online gang systems, RDR2 will likely explore what it was like to run a crime ring in the Wild West. This could include gun running, drugs, prostitution, counterfeit currency and more. 2. Witness This! Red Dead Redemption’s witness system was pretty cool: if you committed a crime and someone saw you, they’d run to the nearest officer and report you. However, you could bribe them to shush them up, or, if you didn’t care for such trivialities, hogtie them and silence them however you saw fit. Here’s hoping Red Dead Redemption 2 features an advanced version of this system. Maybe one of the protagonists is more charming than the others and can talk his way out of crimes. Maybe witnesses will hide and try to get revenge on you later down the line, or assign you a quest that helps them out in exchange for their silence. 3. Crime And/Or Punishment While you can have every lawman in the country chasing you down, once you’re caught you’re good as… respawned? Yes, unfortunately the consequences were never as severe as I would’ve liked them to be—this is a videogame after all. But with Red Dead Redemption 2, I think Rockstar should up the ante. If you’re a gonna be a bad hombre then you shouldn’t have access to most towns and villages. You have to live life on the run. And should you be caught, well perhaps you’re given a probation period of some kind, or (if there are multiple protagonists) you have to switch to another character and bust the previous one out of jail. 4. “You Gotta Run” We only hear one line of dialogue in Red Dead Redemption 2’s trailer: “Listen to me, when the time comes, you gotta run and don’t look back. This is over.” One could assume our characters are going to be on the run for a big chunk of the game, or at least to get the ball rolling. Maybe you and your gang are always on the lookout for bounty hunters and lawmen, and the game won’t let you relax until you clear your name. 5. Border Patrol Just like the real world (well, most of the time), crossing the border in Red Dead Redemption to either New Austin or Nuevo Paraiso meant your bounty didn’t follow you. Crimes committed in another country kept a separate tally. Given the rumored size of Red Dead Redemption 2’s map, there’ll be plenty of regions to explore and borders to cross. It’d be interesting if Rockstar wove more Native American influence into RDR2 and applied a different bounty/crime system based on which territories you were in—and who you’ve sworn allegiance to. So, what crimes did you commit in Red Dead Redemption, and what do you want to be able to do in RDR2? The post Law & Disorder: 5 Ideas for Red Dead Redemption 2’s Justice System appeared first on RDR2. Read the full story

The folks over at Windows Central just broke the news that Microsoft will be using a certain anticipated Rockstar game to help promote its next console, Project Scorpio, at an exclusive event within the next few weeks. According to a partial list of marketing materials related to the upcoming event, Microsoft will use Red Dead Redemption 2, Forza Motorsport 7, Star Wars Battlefront 2 and Call of Duty: WWII to showcase Scorpio’s 4K resolution capabilities. It remains unclear whether Microsoft will simply name drop Red Dead Redemption 2 at the event, or if Rockstar will use the highly publicized opportunity to reveal a new trailer to a crowd eager for any new information pertaining to RDR2. We can only hope for the latter. With roughly 6-8 months remaining until RDR2’s expected launch, Rockstar should be releasing more information any day now, including gameplay, character, and story details. The event in question might actually be this year’s E3 on June 11th. Microsoft announced Project Scropio at last year’s E3, and is now expected to hold a 4K Briefing at E3 2017. However, it wouldn’t be surprising if Microsoft also held its own, separate Scorpio unveiling apart from E3, as the tech giant wants to drum up as much excitement for Scorpio exclusives given the relatively poor sales performance of the Xbox One. At the moment, Project Scorpio has a “Holiday 2017” release date—likely late October or early November so Microsoft can take advantage of the Black Friday and Christmas consumer rush. This makes a possible Red Dead Redemption 2 launch title for Scorpio more plausible, as we expect Rockstar to release RDR2 around the same time. In a move similar to Sony and the PS4 Pro, Microsoft is using Project Scorpio as more of a console refresh rather than a traditional next gen console release. However, with Scorpio, Microsoft is upping the ante, claiming it will be the most powerful home console ever. Although we don’t know all of the technical specifications yet, Scorpio currently boasts 6 teraflops(!) of graphical performance power—that’s 4.5x more power than the Xbox One’s GPU. Beyond the true 4K gaming that’s been highlighted, Project Scorpio also has 320 GB/s of memory bandwidth and 8 CPU cores. It’s also backwards compatible with Xbox One games and will boost the resolution and frame rate of most of the Xbox One’s library. So far, the raw specs that have been revealed point to Microsoft preparing for the future of 4K TVs and VR gaming, where GPU power is a prerequisite. It also means a beast of a gaming rig that’s sure to make Red Dead Redemption 2 look as gorgeous as its PC counterpart (assuming Rockstar releases a PC version). We’ll keep you updated on new information as it develops. The post Report: Red Dead Redemption 2 Coming to ‘Project Scorpio’ Xbox, New Footage Likely to be Shown appeared first on RDR2. Read the full story

Rockstar Games has a penchant for being the funny guy amongst the major game developers and publishers in the industry. Humor in video games is pretty hard to do well and has usually been reserved for point’n’click adventure games and, on occasion, RPGs. Sure, many other titles have a lick of humor here and there, but it’s either just one or two quips or simply straight up horrid. And then there’s Rockstar Games. In spite of also being the masterminds behind the Max Payne series, which might as well have gotten the subtitle “we can be serious too, promise”, and having released not particularly lighthearted titles like L. A. Noire and Red Dead Redemption, they’re still regarded as one of the main bastions of humor in AAA gaming. Sure, Ubisoft did make that one good South Park game once that got censored into oblivion on half the planet, but that isn’t exactly what we’d call tendency. Where GTA is in its entirety derived from satirical humor, and Max Payne is a serious trip down alcoholism lane, Red Dead Redemption, and presumably the sequel, walk the middle path. Red Dead Redemption, in essence, is not a funny game, or a happy one either. There will be spoilers ahead, be warned… This is a game where the protagonist is betrayed and is blackmailed into killing his former partners while his family is held hostage. This is a game that depicts the death of the Old West, where idealistic concepts of justice and freedom allowed pioneers to live simple lives far from the meddling of the government, which during the game has begun to encroach. This is a game where the protagonist spends the entire runtime trying to distance himself from the life of an outlaw in order to prevent his son from walking the same path, only to get shot into a sieve resulting in his son walking the same path. Cheery. Sure, one can argue that the storylines of GTA games’ aren’t happy either, since they usually feature wholly dysfunctional people plagued with various issues causing them to despise their life and fellow humans, but the games are overflowing with humor, primarily satirical, which make their worlds feel a lot less depressive. Granted, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in Los Santos, but the game is given a whole lot of levity through humor. Red Dead Redemption, on the other hand, was pretty straight and serious the whole way through. It did have touches of humor here and there, such as Herbert Moon being primarily comic relief, but satire and jokes weren’t as common as in GTA, where every billboard, every radio commercial, every line of dialogue is supposed to be a quip of some sort. That said, Red Dead Redemption wasn’t the depressive kind of serious like Max Payne was, a franchise which practically thrived on making the life of its protagonist as miserable as possible. I mean, he’s literally called pain. We’re expecting a similar kind of serious tone from Red Dead Redemption 2 with rare, intermittent bouts of levity. If the game does turn out to be a prequel as suspected, a somewhat younger Herbert Moon may make a return much to the joy of fans. In any case, we’re pretty sure the script for Red Dead Redemption 2 will be much poorer on the front of dick jokes than that of Grand Theft Auto 5. We look forward to learning more about the tone of the game as Rockstar reveals more about it in the coming weeks or months. The post Red Dead Redemption 2, Tone, And Humor appeared first on RDR2. Read the full story

Is Red Dead Redemption 2 delayed? That’s the buzz online right now as we close the curtain on March and fans ponder why there still isn’t any new information for Rockstar’s highly anticipated sequel. It’s been almost half a year now with no more posters, trailers, gameplay footage. Not even a peep about the story. Is there reason for concern? Maybe. Rockstar’s initial trailer for Red Dead Redemption 2 gives (the highly ambiguous) “Fall 2017” as the game’s release window. This could be anywhere between September to December, giving Rockstar some breathing room if indeed they need to push the game back a few weeks. However fans are worried that with only 6-8 months to promote a new game, Rockstar is a little late to the party. Sure, we might get something at E3, but that’s not until June. It would be the perfect event to reacher a wider audience but we’d still need additional information about RDR2 before then in order to avoid an inevitable delay. Then again, the Grand Theft Auto developer is notoriously secretive, and some argue that the announcement trailer for Red Dead Redemption 2 was enough to build a tremendous amount of hype that Rockstar is still cruising on. Video games are always prone to delays and Rockstar’s games are no exception to the rule: Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption were both slightly delayed. GTA V for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 was delayed several months from an initial launch window between March and May 2013 to releasing on September 17 that year. The PC version too, was delayed from a simultaneous launch with the PS4 and Xbox One versions on November 18, 2014 to April 14, 2015. The original RDR, on the other hand, had a much shorter delay with Rockstar pushing it back just one month from April to May 18, 2010. Fans might look to Rockstar publisher Take-Two’s next investor call to garner more clues, however the next call probably won’t be until the first or second week of May. If some more concrete information about Red Dead Redemption 2 isn’t on the table by then, a delay is almost certain. Our Thoughts? Red Dead Redemption 2 is likely still on for an October-November release. This has been Rockstar’s preferred launch window for most of its games, including every Grand Theft Auto except GTA IV (which was released in April 2008). And if there is a delay, it’ll be minor – probably so Rockstar can optimize a PS4 Pro version of the game. With so many blockbuster games releasing around now (Mass Effect: Andromeda, Horizon Zero Dawn, Nier, Persona 5 and the Nintendo Switch with games like Zelda), Rockstar is probably just waiting for a good moment to take all the thunder for itself. Now that the Switch is out in the wild though and Destiny 2 has been announced (September 8 by the way), they are probably moving some Red Dead Redemption 2 pieces into place. That being said, we would love a new trailer to pick apart right about now! The post Analysis: Is Red Dead Redemption 2 Delayed? appeared first on RDR2. Read the full story

One thing we often see in Red Dead Redemption 2 related discussions is people getting mobbed for daring to suggest that Rockstar might show something about the game at this year’s E3. Whenever the subject is brought up, a posse of foaming-mouthed internet smartasses jumps down the commenter’s throat saying that Rockstar never does E3. Thing is, that ain’t true. Sure, they usually avoid major events like E3, which is why we ourselves previously warned against getting your hopes up for something that most likely won’t happen. The chance that we’ll get new Red Dead Redemption 2 info at the Electronic Entertainment Expo this year is really slim, since it wouldn’t really fit Rockstar’s profile, but let’s all stop and remember that there has been precedent for this in the past. Notably, Agent, the game that never was, got it’s first announcement at an E3 conference in 2009. We haven’t heard anything about it ever since, and after a whole lot of WIP assets were posted online, it’s likely the project was scrapped entirely. Now, if you’d take a single unreleased console exclusive as hardly enough evidence, we’d understand. However, there’s still the announcement of GTA 5’s Enhanced Edition at the Sony presentation during the E3 conference in the same year the game launched. The Enhanced Edition went on to actually be released by Rockstar, so that’s pretty compelling proof that saying “Rockstar never does E3” is categorically untrue. There really is no need to mercilessly shoot down conversation about the upcoming game we’re all excited about, so let’s take a look at a few reasons why Rockstar might consider an E3 announcement. When we get down to it, Rockstar doesn’t “need” E3. Red Dead Redemption 2 has already become something of an internet sensation, having been caught up by many prestigious non-gaming publications as well as the typical coverage from gaming sites. The announcement itself got more publicity than other games get throughout the entire stretch of time between announcement and release. Fans have been discussing the cinematic trailer that Rockstar released last year ever since. With this kind of publicity fuelling the game’s marketing, plus the brand value of Red Dead and Rockstar, RDR2 is already going to sell extremely well on its name alone. When we get down to it, Rockstar doesn’t need E3, but it won’t be hurt by doing a presentation either. A reason why Rockstar might want to break character and appear at E3 is to tap mainstream audiences. GTA 5’s massive success can most be chalked up to the mainstream crowds, and Red Dead just doesn’t have that kind of pull outside of the gaming community. Grand Theft Auto 5 didn’t need E3 for its initial announcement because it was popular enough without it, and then Rockstar opted for E3 with their Enhanced Edition announcement. If Red Dead Redemption 2 hopes to move the same kind of crowds – not that it likely will – it will also need the attention of the mainstream, and without the kind of brand recognition that GTA has, Rockstar would be smart to grab the opportunity that is E3. Officially, Rockstar generally skips major gaming events because they don’t want other major announcements to steal even a bit of their thunder. They don’t just want to be the most-talked-about devs during announcement week, but the only talked-about devs. However, for the sake of giving Red Dead larger reach in the pool of casual customers, they might set aside these worries like they did with the Enhance Edition and shoot off a trailer when E3 comes. We do know for a fact that Take-Two Interactive will be present at E3, however that more or less is a given due to 2K usually holding some kind of presentation, and many gamers are expecting a new Borderlands game to be announced soon, likely at E3. Since the guest-list only shows parent companies, Rockstar and 2K are not individually shown meaning we don’t quite know what to expect from the show. Rockstar is known to release few details for their games leading up to launch, but when it’s starting to get close (read: a few months away) they do drop a few major bombs to build the hype, and seeing as they’ve been mum all this time, E3 actually seems like a great venue. The major competitors that we know of would be Destiny 2 and the new Call of Duty (we’re not judging quality here, but general popularity among the mainstream gamers). Both of these games are wholly different genres, Destiny 2 is working off a previous title which left many gamers bitter and the only way a CoD can recover from the blunder (financially speaking) of Infinite Warfare is to return to its WW2 roots, which a leak allegedly confirms. Basically, the stage is set for Rockstar to ride into E3 and steal the show with a major Red Dead Redemption 2 infodump. They’ve already won the mainline and hardcore gaming communities, so this effort would clearly be aimed at the demographic that makes up the majority of GTA 5’s player base. In this sense, E3 is ripe for the conquering. Of course, all of this is conjecture until the event actually comes around. But we’d be happy if we wouldn’t need to wait until then for some more official info. The post Red Dead Redemption 2 At E3: Because Rockstar *Does* Announce Stuff At The Expo appeared first on RDR2. Read the full story